Fat Pants Friday: Blue Bottle Coffee’s Snickerdoodle

February 4, 2011

To be honest, we’ve never understood the allure of snickerdoodles. That’s probably because they don’t match the promise of their name, which suggests some sort of mythical cookie version of a Snickers bar but instead describes a glorified sugar cookie, tarted up with a bit of cinnamon. But when we tried Blue Bottle’s version last weekend, we finally understood the heights a snickerdoodle can achieve.

Crumb!Rebecca Marx

In the same way that Blue Bottle has helped to transform coffee into a fetish object, it has taken the most unassuming of American cookies and lent it a whiff of exoticism by adding saffron to the dough. The effect is similar to what happened in Sabrina when gawky Sabrina went off to Europe and came back as Audrey Hepburn: The cookie is reassuringly familiar yet completely transformed. The spice has been applied with a light enough hand so that it enhances rather than overshadows the notes of butter, Tahitian vanilla, and sugar; it works so well that it seems less like a radical update than natural evolution of the form.

Soft and cakey but crunchy around the edges, Blue Bottle’s snickerdoodle is also a triumph of texture. And crucially for the Fat Pants scale, it’s also compact: The $1.50 cookie can fit comfortably in a child’s palm, meaning that it’s equally appropriate for both skinny jeans wearing and unrepentant scarfing. We recommend eating two at a go, and then making plans to return as soon as possible for more.

Blue Bottle Coffee
160 Berry Street
718-387-4160

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